Chapter 26
Chapter Twenty-Six
“Ralph?” I called, leaning out the window.
The driver of the carriage slowed the horses and turned on the bench to look at me where I leaned through the window. I liked Raphael Darcay very much—as a Lycan beta he was protective and kind. It was nice that he was always the one who drove when Eamon sent transportation for me.
“Hm?”
I took a deep breath. “Could…could you let me out here?”
His thick brows drew together in concern. “Didn’t you say they were on the other side of the lower city?”
“Yes, but I can walk.” I wrapped my hand tighter around my valise.
After another moment the carriage stopped, one of the horses impatiently stomping. Ralph shushed them, jumped off the driver’s bench and grabbed my door before I could open it. “You shouldn’t walk alone.”
I gave him a warm smile. “It’s daylight, I’ll be fine.” Better to walk than arrive in front of my family’s home in a gilded carriage.
My throat tightened and I tried to take a steadying breath. I wanted to tell Ralph to turn the horses around so we could go back to the inner city—to Eamon’s estate. But after another deep breath I slid from the carriage and turned to grab my belongings.
“Let me accompany you at least,” Ralph pressed, the creases around his eyes deepening with concern.
I rose onto my tiptoes and wrapped him in a hug. “Thank you for offering, but I’ll be fine. Please have a safe journey home.”
He hesitated before nodding with a sigh and touching the brim of his hat. “I’ll meet you here tomorrow evening?”
Tomorrow evening felt like a year away, but I shoved a bright smile on my face and turned down the familiar cobblestones. “See you then.”
The outer city was a jumble of small buildings and stone pathways similar to Oylen in its layout, just with fewer people.
Though there were parts of the inner city that looked worse for wear, it was nothing compared to here.
Shutters hung off hinges, windows were shattered in their frames, and people milled around open doorways staring at anyone who passed.
It was hard to believe it’d been two years since I’d last been here.
No one bothered me as I passed, but hungry eyes gobbled up the sight of my clean dress and the leather valise in my hand.
I walked as quickly as I could without falling into a flat-out run, regretting not allowing Ralph to at least walk me part of the way.
By the time my family’s home came into view the sun was higher in the sky and, though the day was cold, sweat slicked across the back of my neck.
I’d hoped perhaps the house would be as I’d left it but I was sorely disappointed.
The once sunshine-yellow paint was cracked and peeling, exposing the weather-worn wood beneath.
The glass in the windows was long gone and ragged curtains were hung from the inside to block those passing from looking in.
The front door was ajar and, as I approached, a man slipped through the small crack, his blue eyes widening in surprise.
Louis rushed forward to pull me into his arms.
Though he was barely different than the last time I’d seen him, he felt different. Whenever I thought of my brother, it was always him as a scraggly teen, all bones and knobby knees—not the tall, heavily muscled twenty-six-year-old man standing before me now.
“It’s good to see you,” I said, holding onto him tight and working to hold my cringe at the scent of pipe smoke that clung to his clothes.
Louis drew me tighter against him, lips dipping close to my ear. “Let’s go, quick, before they realize you’re here.”
I fought him as he tried to pull me back up the lane. “What? Why?”
Only then did I notice the smudges of bruises across his jaw, the angry red scratch that traced a line down the center of his throat, half-hidden by his shoulder-length blond hair.
Before he could answer the door opened wider and my mother ambled onto the street.
His shoulders rounded in on themselves and he clutched me tighter.
“You should not have come,” he breathed.
“Seems home isn’t good enough for the jewel of the Souzterain, if it took you this long,” my mother sniffed.
Slowly I stepped around Louis. My mother Penelope had once been beautiful—I’d seen portraits of her likeness when she’d been my age.
Blood dens had been plentiful in the outer city up until about fifteen years ago when the Covenant’s reach had expanded to shut them down.
Once she had been the prized giver of this region, with hair the same shade as mine and Louis’ and clear pale skin.
There was still a hint of the beauty beneath the deep lines and leathery skin. Wine and spirits had taken their toll along with the nasha root she and my father smoked constantly. But I always privately thought it was greed that had the biggest impact on her beauty.
“I’ve been busy, as you intended,” I answered, holding my valise in front of me like a shield.
Her eyes dropped to the case and I bit the inside of my cheek to fight my grimace. Sweat dewed beneath my palms. Louis put a hand on my back but didn’t reach for my belongings.
“You must be thirsty,” he said, voice dropping into the hush we used around our parents.
My mother snorted. “We’ve got no serangunah, if that’s what you’re angling for.”
Dread turned my veins to sludge and I fixed my attention to my feet. “I don’t need any.”
“Slacking then?”
I rolled my lips together and shook my head. “No, Maman, I drank some last night before the journey.”
Shrewd eyes flicked over my dress and pinned-up hair. With a huff she turned toward the door and disappeared into the dark house. I ached for the apartment I shared with Lilith and Noah and even more for the music room in Eamon’s estate.
When I’d been a child, the house hadn’t been luxurious but it had at least held furniture.
Now, in place of the beautiful wooden dining table we’d gathered around was a small pallet elevated off the ground with a stack of bricks covered in a tablecloth.
Worn pillows circled the makeshift table, so packed with dust it was difficult to tell what color they once had been.
The pallet had been here when I’d left, but there had been chairs, which had disappeared along with most of the pots and pans in the small kitchen.
There were, however, gleaming bottles of spirits on the chipping countertop, deep ambers and opalescent creams winking in the light that ghosted through the tears in the fabric covering the windows.
Louis slipped in behind me, quiet as a ghost, grabbed a cracked glass from the shelf and filled it from the spluttering tap. I took it gratefully, hiding my wince at the metallic taste of the water, and forced myself to drink it in one.
“So,” my mother started, sliding one of the bottles closer to her and tugging out the cork. The glugging of amber liquid in the glass sounded eerily like the oyista I’d been sending her each month. “What do you have for us?”
A pounding began behind my left eye. “Three hundred oyista.”
The glass slammed onto the countertop, liquid sloshing out of the top. Louis didn’t flinch but, after two years, I did.
“This is the gratitude you show me after everything I’ve done for you? Have you no clients? No patrons?”
A muscle jumped in my jaw, adding to the pain spreading across my face. “I have a client, Maman. He is generous but I—”
“Obviously not if three hundred oyista is all you can give.”
My teeth clicked as I closed my mouth. Louis took a step forward, but I caught his eye and shook my head while our mother reached for her glass, taking a few tries to curl her fingers around it.
“In my time I brought in three hundred in thirty minutes. Two suckers, one on each side of my neck.” She made her free hand into a claw and jabbed at either side of her throat. “Leeches falling at my feet and offering me anything in the world just for a taste.”
And look where that got you, Maman, I wanted to say.
My knuckles bleached whiter around the handle of my valise as she took a step closer, the scent of stale wine heavy on her breath.
She leered at me—noting each item of clothing I wore, the pin peeking out from my hair, the case in my hands—and then stumbled past. The door didn’t close behind her, but she was gone in another breath, ambling out of the house and down toward the center of town.
Louis exhaled loudly, running both hands over his face. “I should have scooped you up and run.”
“She’ll be unconscious before nightfall.”
His laugh was bitter. “It’s morning I’m afraid of, Ria.”
My heart twisted at the nickname he used, having been too young to pronounce my whole name as I’d cared for him—practically raised him despite our mere four-year age difference.
He gestured toward the small hallway. “Come on.”
The room we’d shared as children was now in the same state as the living space. In place of the small beds we’d slept on, even after we’d outgrown them, was nothing now but a thin mattress piled with worn blankets.
Louis leaned against the cracked window frame, gathering up his hair in a knot on the back of his head. “I’ll take the floor tonight.”
I set down my valise and opened it with a flick of my thumb on the latch. I’d been careful not to pack anything too fine, but I drew out an old tunic of Noah’s he hadn’t wanted anymore and a pair of trousers. “Here. These might be a bit tight in the shoulders and hips, but I think they’ll fit.”
Louis took a tentative step forward. “You don’t have to do that…”
“I know, but I wanted to.”
“I don’t need it,” he said a little more firmly. “I’m fine.”
Heat seared across the bridge of my nose as I stared at the boy who was now a man.
I hated recognizing myself in his stance—the tendons standing out across the backs of his hands from his tight fists, the height of his shoulders bunching toward his ears, the blank expression in his eyes, which were the exact shade as mine.
“I’m working the docks now under the name Francis Martin to save up enough to leave,” he continued. “Today’s off for All Souls, but…I’m making enough.”
I was relieved to hear he wasn’t using his real name, but my brows ticked up all the same. “Do they suspect?”
A few locks of hair fell from the knot as he shook his head. “No, she doesn’t really notice I’m gone, and Father…well…”
I would be surprised if I saw Father at all while I was here. We shared a grimace before I pressed the clothes to his chest. “Take them.”
After a long moment of silence he nodded, scraped and bloodied fingers closing around the fabric, and took a step back.
He turned toward the window, slid it open and leaned over the sill.
With a heave, he dragged a large box through and set it on the ground.
It was covered in moss, a few vines even hanging from one end, and attached to a long line trailing out the window.
Louis opened the lid, careful not to let any dirt drop inside, and placed the folded clothes on top of the small pile of items he’d collected. A pair of shoes, a steel-backed hairbrush, a small bag of what I was sure was oyista.
“That isn’t all of it, right?” I asked, keeping my voice low.
He shook his head. “No.”
I knew better than to ask where he hid the rest of his money. He took his time closing the box and replacing it outside within the tangle of ivy and bushes beneath the back window.
“Where will you put your things?” he asked, looking around the room.
“There’s no point. She knows I’ve brought a case. I’ll just keep it close.”
Tension rippled across his shoulders. “You shouldn’t have come.”
I sighed, crossed the room and wrapped my arms around his waist. “I know.”